Share and shoot the world with Shutterguides.com

Shutterguides.com allows you to make “photo guides” for locations you are an ‘expert’ on or even just a place you know well and want to share, and it also allows you to find new places to explore and shoot with your own equipment. And albeit fairly new to the scene, Shutterguides.com offers a slick and professional site for users to share and explore photographic locations across the world.

Creating a Guide is a supremely simple process, but still complex enough that it’s interesting. You will load pictures (from either Flickr or your Google+ account, both of which have multiple free options) and then place them on a highly accurate, dynamic map guide created using flash by Google maps. It will let you pinpoint the exact location of the picture, and if the picture has GPS coordinates embedded from the camera or other processing device, it will be used to automatically place the photo’s location for you.

It couldn’t be simpler. Once you have the locations for each picture pinpointed (or generalized, as you choose) you then move on to making notes to potential shutterbugs for the site to let them know what you think is important.

For instance, should they shoot from one end of the street more than the other because of the sun or something? Should they wait until a specific time of day to get the best shot? Anything you think they should know to get a good photo in this spot. Share you experience and knowledge. Tell them if they need a specific lens or that they should bring a handful of nuts for the local squirrels and they will pose for you. Share your own world in photos this way!

You’ll then finish the guide with a name and a description, followed by choosing how to distribute it. You can share it automatically on numerous social sites like Facebook and Flickr as well as slightly less known ones like Xanga and Yigg. It’s a broad option base they offer and it’s all free, too! You can also print your guide for handing out to relatives that want to follow your trip.

Of course, in addition to letting you create and share, you can also search and explore the work of others, thereby finding new and exciting places to shoot your own photos. This, I think is a great tool for anyone who wants to take part in a truly social media experience. You’ll have the option to search by specific key words, of course, as well as lists like the latest uploads and the most popular (downloaded) ones. The whole thing is created and maintained, therefore is a collective thing of, the people directly involved and interacting with it. Things like this are why the Internet was created, in my opinion, so it is most definitely worth checking out. Until next time, my friends!

Born and raised overseas in a military family, B.C. Tietjens visited and lived in many places all over the world. He has worked on a number of publications and enjoys writing for different audiences, on such diverse subjects as relationships, technology, prestidigitation, self-improvement, entertaining children, and biographical stories. He currently writes primarily for Freewaregenius and enjoys the heck out of it.

I run a site with a similar idea called Where Did You Take That? (www.wheredidyoutakethat.com) where you can upload directly. The focus is more on helping photographers find all the images within an area rather than following the path of a specific photographer.